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Making A Difference – Thoughts, Observations and Opinions
This is Dave Brock’s Blog.
It offers my views on a variety of business, sales, marketing, and leadership topic. My goal is to make a difference for you, the reader, in both your professional and personal lives.
Latest Posts
Figuring It Out, Critical Sales Competency!
I spend a lot of time in group meetings or 1 on 1’s with sales people trying to understand how they do their jobs and trying to understand what they need to be more effective and drive bigger numbers. To be honest, most of the time I have to bite my tongue as I listen to the litany of things they need to be successful. It always starts with more and better products–along with the lowest prices. When I hear that, I think, “If we have that, why do we need you?” It then goes on to laundry lists including, […]
Your Numbers Give You The Questions, Not The Answers!
I’m obsessed with metrics and numbers. Call anyone in our company for help on sales performance and we will ask you to dump all sorts of data on us: Historical performance, historical performance by sales person, by customer segment, by product, by region, pipeline metrics, sales cycle time, win rates, average deal value, deal distribution, customer retention, customer churn, new customer acquisition, share of customer, share of solution, share of territory, any number of activity metrics, phase of the moon/tidal currents and their relationship to the sales cycle. OK, the last data point is just experimental—we can’t yet draw conclusions […]
Focus On The Customer, Magic Happens!
Several weeks ago, I did a deal review with a client. It was a very large deal, important to my client. The sales person is an outstanding sales person–one of the top performers in the organization. As I looked at the notes on the deal, the sales person had a number of good conversations with people in the organization. He had a pretty good understanding of what they were trying to do. He was laser focused on demonstrating how his solution was the best in helping the customer achieve the goal. He was trying to reach the decision-maker and had […]
Prospecting—Sweaty Palms And Picking Up The Phone!
Last week I was having a conversation with an executive. This executive had an incredible background. He had built and sold several very successful start-ups. You would recognize their names. Currently he served on the boards of several large companies, was involved in another great start-up, was part of a venture company. This individual has just an awesome background, filled with success–and is just wickedly smart. Somehow, we got onto the topic of prospecting. I was describing a prospecting call I had recently made. Laughing as I described the situation, I talked about preparing for a call on a very senior […]
Whose Performance Problem Is It?
A while back I was involved in a discussion about performance. For some reason, a specific individual had drawn the attention and ire of a top executive—rather an account that individual was responsible for was drawing the ire of the executive. The issue was real, the account–a major channel partner–wasn’t performing, in fact it was creating problems for my client. It’s reasonable to hold the sales person accountable for addressing this issue. The sales person may have needed support in addressing the issue, but it is the sales person’s responsibility to manage the relationship, manage the shared expectations, and help […]
Value Creation As A Form Of Discounting
There are all sorts of articles on creating superior differentiated value. Lots of them talk about creating more value than the customer expects, surprising and delighting them. In truth, I’ve been raised in this camp and have espoused some of these concepts myself. Just the concept of “added value,” is actually value over and above what the customer needs and expects. In reality, value creation can be a slippery slope. We need to create the value needed to win the business, at a price the customer is willing to pay and that is acceptable to us. Going over and above that […]